


Glass

by Chiqui (cmleal)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure & Romance, Coming of Age, F/M, Mutant Powers, Mutants, Romance, Teen Romance, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-02
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-07 08:02:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4255671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cmleal/pseuds/Chiqui
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is eight. Her mama tells her, "Never leave home."</p><p>Elena is cursed with the power to destroy. And when a tragic accident triggers the Mutant Extermination Special Operatives to hunt her down, she books it to another country. With a different identity and a completely rewritten life, she believes that the worst is over.</p><p>Until she meets someone like her. The boy from a long ago life she thought she'd forgotten. The boy with a special gift of his own: the power to heal.</p><p>This is a story of two adolescents searching for identity, happiness, and love, in a world that fears and rejects them for who they are.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Shatter

She is eight. Her mama tells her, _Never leave home._

She doesn’t understand. She wants to bury her dog, Pepper, who died, bleeding and howling, in her arms. But mama doesn’t let her, and when she reaches out to hold her hand, mama backs away and collides against a table, sending the flower vase atop it shattering onto the floor, tiny glass shards translucent in the red-yellow, mid-afternoon light streaming through the windows. Mama’s eyes are wide. Her hands tremble.

 _Don’t touch me,_ mama yells, and she doesn’t like hearing mama yell, the anger in her voice piercing, making her sick to her gut, so she obeys. She huddles in a darkened corner and waits for mama to come back, but when moonbeams replace the fading sunrays, spilling silver-white onto the marbled floor, her body betrays her will and her eyelids grow heavy with sleep.

Her stomach is growling when mama returns in the morning with red, dark-rimmed eyes. Mama doesn’t speak when she heads to the kitchen to prepare her meal: Bacon and eggs with marmalade, her favorite. Mama is silent when she sets the food onto the table and pours orange juice into a glass. One plate, one set of utensils, one glass.

That morning is the start of many mornings eating alone.

They move to a new house a few days after Pepper died. It’s a small, yellow cottage in the middle of a dense, green forest, with a kitchen, one room and bathroom, wide windows, and a cozy little porch. Mama leaves home often, to head to her job and buy groceries, but when she gets home she’s often too tired to cook anything.

She brings home Chinese take-out. The food rots in their fridge, week by week by week.

Mama tells her, for years, _Never go outside. Do not find the other children. Stay here, with me, and nothing wrong will happen._

For the first year it’s great. It’s quiet and secluded, but she’s not very lonely with the humming of crickets at night and singing of birds at day to keep her company. For the second year she tolerates the isolation, because she doesn’t want to see mama disappointed like she was that day Pepper died.

When she turns eleven, she begins to ask. Why can’t she leave? Why can’t she play with other children? Why does mama cry every night, without fail?

What’s wrong with her?

Mama doesn’t like to answer questions like these. She changes the subject and asks if she’s read her books and practised her violin. She answers yes and lets it go for the first few weeks. And then she begins to push. More and more, each day.

One day mama screams at her. She screams back.

The windowpane shatters. Fragile glass burst into pieces, plates and vases explode. Translucent shards, flying across the room, raining sharp drops that cut through the skin. Like the day Pepper bit her in the arm, years ago. The same day Pepper suddenly collapsed, bleeding and howling into her arms, her heart beating slower, and slower yet, against her own.

Mama begins to cry. She doesn’t want mama to cry, so she takes a step forward, reaching out to her. Mama steps back, her face pale, her eyes wide with terror. Bright red blood drips from a shallow cut on her cheek.

Mama asks, with tears streaming down her face, _Aren’t you happy here? Isn’t mama’s company enough? Don’t you love mama?_

Her hand drops to her side. The air is silent, tense. Broken glass litter the wooden floor. And she replies, because she doesn’t want mama to cry anymore, _Yes, mama. I love you very much._

_Then promise never to ask those questions again._

_I promise._

 


	2. Boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One day, something unexpected happens: Her daydreams cross the line into reality. One day, a boy happens.

Elena de Dios turns 14 inside a mustard-yellow cottage somewhere deep within a forest in northern California. She thinks she will grow old and die in the same spot, never knowing what the world is like, outside picture books and forests and cold, leftover take-outs. But she’s learned to cope. She has her books and DVDs of movies and TV shows, stuff her mother sometimes brings home, when she’s in a good mood and wants Elena to be in a good mood too. Through these precious items she lives the lives she could never have.

One day she’s a spy on a top-secret mission to save the world. The next, a princess, dancing and laughing and lonely. The day after that, a working girl in the big city, stuck in a predicament about which guy she should choose as her boyfriend.

She likes those the most, the stories about love. To imagine feeling what those writers describe as butterflies in their stomach. To have her heart skip a beat, to fail at erasing that stupid smile on her face, to see the sunrise when that special person enters a room, to fall and fall and fall, and then to fly.

Then one day, something unexpected happens: Her daydreams cross the line into reality. One day, a _boy_ happens.

He appears on the night when mama comes home and walks straight into her room, falling face-first on her bed, snoring. Elena is bored and fully awake, and the soft, inviting draft slipping through the half-open living room window is cool and smelling of rain and newly-drenched grass. Elena peeks into mama’s room, watches her back rise and fall in a slow, rhythmic pattern, and after a half-minute, closes her door with a gentle, almost inaudible click.

Then she rushes to the shoe rack, bare feet pattering against the cold, wooden floor. She slips small, dainty feet into cloth shoes with soft soles and slides open the lock leading outside. The moonlight slips through the cracks in the canopy of trees and filters through the gap between door and frame as she slides through it. Then she painstakingly nudges the door, inch by inch, until it closes with barely a sound.

It’s tempting to laugh and shout and dance when she escapes from her mustard-colored prison, the cool breeze blowing against her skin, dancing on her face, tangling through her black, coarse hair. Her white skirt billows in the wind as she rushes past trees that turn blurry in her peripheral vision, the scattered leaves on the forest floor soaked from the recent rain, muting the sound of her hurried footsteps. When she thinks she’s far enough, her lips twitch upwards and she allows herself to laugh, freely, and twirls around with her hands stretched out, releasing any inhibitions she has. She feels free.

Then she hears a rustle in the nearby shrubbery.

She skids to a halt, her heart pounding against her ribcage. Her wide eyes fix upon the source of the sound. The shrubs remain still. A beat passes, two. Just when she thinks she’s safe, something springs out of the drenched shrubs, sending leaves and branches flying, water droplets shimmering against the moonlight. She spots yellow eyes and teeth.

Elena screams.

Branches snap and break and rain onto the damp, leaf-littered ground. Deep scratches form on the barks of trees. Night creatures skitter and flutter away, their warning calls a cacophony of distress echoing throughout the forest.

She presses both palms against both sides of her head, breaths laboured and heavy, cold sweat trickling down her forehead and temples. Her bulging eyes dart left and right, searching for the predator, hoping she had killed it before it could do the same to her.

There is rustling near the now sliced-through bushes. She swallows the lump on her throat, brings her trembling hands down to her sides, and inches closer, gaze fixed on the spot where she caught the movement. The clouds above shift and moonlight floods through the forest floor, catching on fur drenched with a dark, thick liquid.

Her breath catches in her throat.

A raccoon looks up at her, twitching in its own pool of blood. It moves its paws, up, down, up, down, as if calling her closer, _Help me._ Its breaths are ragged. It emits a dying sound that cuts through the air and pierces her heart.

“Oh no...” A hand goes to her mouth. She feels sick. For a moment the raccoon is her dog Pepper, looking up at her with sad, wide eyes filled with hurt and betrayal. She crouches down, reaches out. The raccoon curls a little onto itself, as if scared she would hurt him more if she touches it. It might be right.

Something else stirs further ahead. She gasps and scampers back. A shadow flits, briefly, amongst the trees. Her eyes narrow. Something emerges from the darkness. Blond hair, dark shirt and jeans. Eyes a bright, striking blue in the night. A _someone._

The boy and the girl in the forest stare at each other, as still as statues in cathedrals.

The dying animal emits a pained, labored cry. The boy’s eyes dart towards it and then he’s rushing towards the raccoon before she could even say something. What that something is, she doesn’t know; maybe a wild denial, likely a guilty confession. It doesn’t matter, though, because the boy _doesn’t_ ask. He just kneels by the raccoon’s side and reaches for it and presses his hand against the slash across its chest. It screeches and claws at his hand but he holds his ground, a flinch the only give-away of the pain he feels. Then the raccoon stops, abruptly; it looks like it’s given up the fight.

Her brows furrow. No, there’s something else happening. She has to inch closer to see it, to even believe what she’s watching right now. The raccoon’s wound closes. The blood on its hide dries up. It blinks, twice, gazing up at the boy and the thinks that this is how it looks, when someone regards a savior. The boy retracts his hand and she can’t control the gasp that escapes her. The raccoon’s wounds are gone, its damp, patched together fur the only evidence that it was once dying in its own blood.

The raccoon gets back onto its paws, sniffs at the boy, and scampers back into the shadows of the night forest.

The boy turns back to her and she jumps. Her eyes dart away for a moment. She forces herself to return his gaze. He’s not much older than her, she thinks. One or two years older at best. He’s eyeing her curiously, his nose crinkled a little. His head tilts, almost indistinct, to one side. In the tense quietness that follows, the evening breeze whispers in her ear. Finally:

“How do you do it?” she asks aloud. _Why can you bring things back to life when all I can do is break everything apart?_ she silently demands.

A small smile forms on his face, shy and uncertain. “I don’t know.” He glances down and scratches the back of his head, then peeks back at her through his lashes. “Is it strange?”

She’s silent for a while, then responds with, “No.”

His smile widens. He looks like he could be an actor in a movie or TV series. “Good.”

She considers running back home, but she can’t seem to move her feet. Strange, isn’t it? So, just to have something else to do, she asks, “What’s your name?”

“Theo. What’s yours?”

“Elena.”

“Why are you here, Elena?”

She shrugs. “I live here.”

“In the forest?”

“Yes.” She pauses. “Is that strange?”

He laughs and shakes his head. The blond curls brush against his forehead. “No.”

She doesn’t know what it is about him that makes her spirits lift and lets her finally smile back. “Good.”

There’s a brief, awkward pause then. They break eye contact at the same time. She shifts on her feet, staring at a disturbed patch of leaves. She realizes it was the same spot where the raccoon lay before the boy brought it back to life.

The reality hits her all over again. The boy _brought it back to life._

When she raises her eyes back to Theo, he’s already staring at her. She could feel her cheeks heat up.

“S-So...” Theo slips both hands into his pockets. “You really don’t think it’s weird?”

“‘Weird’?” She lets out a small chuckle. “It’s _amazing_.”

He shrugs as if he doesn’t believe the power to heal is something to be thankful for. She wants to shake him because maybe that will make him think otherwise.

“Really, it is.” She wants to tell him she would give anything to have his gift instead of her curse, but she doesn’t want to scare him away. She wants to stay with him just a little while more. “You saved that raccoon. It could have died without you.” _It should have died because of me, but you came and saved it and that’s what matters. You could right what I did wrong. You showed me that my mistakes could be fixed. That there is hope for me._

_I could hope again._

She must have been gawking at him because he looks away and runs a hand through his hair, then clears his throat and sways on his feet. “Um,” he says in response.

She wants to slam her head against the nearest tree. “I didn’t mean it that way. I mean, I don’t know what I sounded like, but whatever it is that I said that made you feel uncomfortable, I didn’t mean to make you feel that way. W-Well, not that I’m really sure I know what you’re feeling right now, but you see, I haven’t really been with people a lot so I might be wrong and I’m probably just making this _really_ awkward for us both and--”

His laugh cuts short her embarrassing tirade. For a moment she assumes he’s laughing at how silly she’s acting, but when she raises her eyes to him, she discovers a kind, sincere, happy laugh. And in that moment he’s the brightest star in her little forest world.

“No, no.” He waves a hand in the air, dismissively. “You didn’t make me uncomfortable. It’s okay. Thank you.”

She blinks. “For what?”

“For being honest.”

Her heart skips a beat. She can’t wipe that stupid smile off her face. She feels like she’s falling and falling and falling. She thinks she could fly.

Elena de Dios is 14. She’s been isolated from the world, perpetually sad and confused, with only her mama for company. She remembers she hasn’t taken a bath yet today. She’s alone with a boy with the power to heal, a boy who doesn’t know how or why he can do such things, and all she can worry about is she hopes she doesn’t smell too much.

The boy bids goodbye soon after their short conversation. She asks if he’ll be back. He says yes. She waves and forgets to ask him why _he’s_ here. Why he’s alone in a forest at night, wandering, maybe aimlessly, but then she considers that she’s been doing the same so maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe he’s running away from something too, just like her.

Later on, she lies in her room, staring at the ceiling with a smile on her face and a daydream in her eyes, and she concludes that she just might be in love.


	3. Shift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The days turn into months, carrying with it the shifts in the weather.

She wakes up the next morning with a wide smile on her face, tap-dances to the bathroom, then skips all the way to the kitchen and executes a clumsy pirouette. She trips and falls onto her chair, its legs skidding and screeching against the floor and making her wince.

She flashes mama a sheepish smile, then, after a beat, hums a song from the movie _Singing in the Rain_ (“Good morning, good morning!”) as mama sets breakfast. Mama harmonizes with her at the chorus. They eat together, for the first time in years, and mama gives her a kiss and a pat on the head before she heads off to work.

She sings and dances and talks to imaginary friends about the boy that could heal, how he emerged from the darkness as sudden and bright as sunlight. When the moon rises and mama is sound asleep, she sneaks out and waits until daybreak for the boy that never arrives, then creeps back into the mustard-colored house, into her room, her bed, and she dreams and dreams and dreams.

But as days pass without a glimmer of the boy emerging from the woods, she begins to doubt his actuality. Is he real? Is he just a creation of her overactive imagination? Did she dream it all up, that night when the forest was brighter than the sun?

Regardless of whether she saw him in her reality or in her dream-world, the fact is that the boy never returns. And regardless of the truth of his existence, the certainty is that her life is no longer the same.

One afternoon, while mama is away, she returns to the forest in search for the spot that Theo once occupied. She imagines being one of those daring explorers in her books, charting new ground--even though she’s actually walked this route before. With her lips pressed together in determination, she traces her steps, pushes away low-hanging branches, stops when she spots a deep scratch on a tree bark. She scans the floor and kicks away a few dead leaves, then finds a brown patch of dried blood. She remembers the raccoon. She remembers Pepper. She remembers the boy.

 _He’s real_ , she decides.

Her gaze drifts back to the scratched tree bark. She makes a move to raise her hand, and then stops mid-way, self-conscious of how foolish this might look. But then she urges herself to go on. Who’s around to judge her, anyway? The birds continue to twitter obliviously. The trees stand still as towers, immobile, soundless. She straightens her arm so that her hand is in front of her, then spreads her fingers and faces her palm towards the tree. She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes and concentrates. Her brows furrow.  
She feels the hair on her arms stand on end. Hears a burst of wind zipping past her ears. Feels tingles in her fingertips. For the briefest while she thinks she could _feel_ herself reaching into the tree bark, its fibres and tissues wrapping around her skin, the water flowing through its veins cool against her fingers, everything that makes up the existence of a tree at the palm of her hands. At her very control.

She clasps them together. And then she breaks them apart.

Her eyes snap open at the same time she utters out a gasp. Rough chunks of wood shoot through the air. Bits and pieces of splinter tangle in her coarse hair. A sharp fragment cuts past her cheek, but the pain barely registers.

She gawks at the concave depression in the bark. _She_ did it, carved it without panic or fear ruling her emotions. At first, all she can do is stare, and then a smile slowly, slowly makes its way in. It tugs at her lips and lights up her face. She laughs, loud and unreserved, filled with disbelief and awe. And then, triumph.

She laughs and laughs and laughs. She could control it. She could control her abilities! Just like Theo could focus his healing towards something, so she too could target a specific object for her to destroy. With practice, she could only get stronger and more accurate. She would be able to prevent herself from accidentally killing anyone, ever again. There would be no more dead raccoons. No more Pepper’s.

And then maybe mama would no longer fear her.

Slowly, slowly, the parts of her mind dedicated to pondering on the existence of Theo is replaced with mental records of her progress. Each day she gets better; first the accuracy of her aim, then the control of energy she puts into it. Or at least she would like to think so. Sometimes an entire bush would explode into green confetti, even when she only intended for a branch to snap. Sometimes a startled songbird would flutter away when the branch it sits on comes tumbling onto the leaf-littered ground, when she was certain she was aiming for the unoccupied one on the opposite end of the tree.

But she doesn’t give up. For the first time in her life, she thinks she can make her world better. For once, she believes her abilities are a good thing. And when she looks into her mirror after a hard day’s practice, the person that stares back is no longer someone she despises.

She trains diligently, every day, in the heat tempered by the shade of the trees, underneath the leaves filtering sunrays and casting abstract light patterns in the leaf-covered forest ground. Sometimes, when she’s resting, or thinking of nothing in particular, Theo blinks briefly back into existence. She thinks she’ll never see him again, but she still believes he can fill the night with golden, infinite light.

The days turn into months, carrying with it the shifts in the weather.

Rainfall hits hard and heavy in the forest, and soon Elena finds herself stranded more and more inside the house, distracted by the drumming of raindrops on the roof, tensing at the sight of lightning and jumping at the booming of thunder. Mama’s mood grows temperamental. Elena doesn’t like it, but she understands; she’s also irritated and restless because the dour weather’s forced her to skip practices.

The singing at breakfast dissipates completely.

The general irascible mood at home is why, on a rare, late afternoon calm, she sprints back into the woods, running, the smell of damp soil and leaves invigorating her, the cool air filling her lungs, awakening the blood in her veins. She allows her feet to take her wherever they lead. When she stops to catch her breath, she realizes that she’s standing at the same spot where she first met Theo, and a melancholy smile crosses her face.

If only she could show him what she could do now.

She raises her palm to a small branch above her, sparkling droplets still fresh in its vivid-green foliage. She wills it to break, and it does, snapping loudly. She laughs, caught in the middle of a cascade of leaves and shreds of branch.

The distant sky rumbles. The logical part of her brain tells her to rush home, but she shoves the thought away because she likes it here. She advances deeper into the woods, reveling in her newfound confidence, in the idea that if she can take hold of her abilities instead of running away from it, then she could do anything, anything at all. It isn’t until a blinding flash of lightning momentarily turns her world white, chased by a deafening clap of thunder, that she decides to, reluctantly, return to the smallness and silence of her stifling home.

But as she runs, a tiny seed takes its form inside her: Dread. It grows, slowly crawling its way from the pit of her stomach to her nerves and veins, the longer she’s outside. She quickens her pace. The trepidation makes her blood run cold. She realizes with horror that she’s lost.

Her breaths quicken. Cold sweat trails down her spine. She should have left markers in the trees when she went deeper into the woods. She shakes her head, vigorously. Why is she so stupid?

She stops to catch her breath and calm herself, but the panic insists on burrowing into every bone and muscle in her body. Frantically, she whirls around. The towering trees and shifting shadows and dark-cloud skies all look the same in every direction, down to the unknown darkness beyond. It’s like every route is the right one and the wrong one, all at once.

She grits her teeth and squeezes her eyes shut. She needs to think. _Think!_ Maybe she left some footprints? It’s difficult to say; the ground is littered with wet leaves that surely prevented her from making a trail. But she looks anyway, retraces her steps backwards. If she even is going backwards.

As if her predicament can’t get any worse, the rain begins to pour.

Elena never curses, and today won’t be any different. She does, however, let out a loud, frustrated yell. She breaks some branches in the process. Strangely enough, it releases all her pent-up frustration and she feels a little lighter, as the splinters fall like the rain around her.

She runs, her shoes squishing and splashing in the mud. She accidentally steps on a large puddle; the dirty water stains the edges of her dress. She blinks away the raindrops pooling in her lashes, searching for a trace of something to tell her that she’s on the right path.

Eventually, she finds it in the familiar scratch on a bark.

 _Yes!_ She breaks into a grin. She did it. All she needs to do now is to run north and keep a straight path until she spots the little yellow house. She wonders what time it is. She hopes mama isn’t on her way back, or else the rain will drench her. And mama will also know she leaves home when mama’s not around, and she fears mama would lock her up inside and take away her forest.

Lightning flashes. Thunder crackles in the air. A resounding boom stops her on her tracks, her surprise and fear temporarily paralyzing her. She shakes her head vigorously and forces the feelings down, shoves them away in that little corner of her mind where they cannot bother her. She will deal with them later; for now, she needs to find home.

The motion returns to her legs and soon she’s dashing through the forest again. Then, as if by her own willpower, the distinctive yellow dot forms through the gaps in the trees. 

She releases a sigh of relief and quickens her pace. The yellow dot grows closer, its features growing more distinct: the mustard paint, the dark-brown door, the wide, glass windows that she had once shattered, and mama had to learn how to reinstall a new one all by herself because no one else ever visits them.

Her grin fades when she notices a figure standing outside the door with her back turned to her. Her blue dress, long-sleeved with white lace, skirts ending below the knee, soaks up the rain and clings to her skin. Her hair sticks to her neck and clothes, raindrops trailing down dull strands and joining the puddle at her feet.

“M-Mama?”

Mama whirls around, her eyes wide. A universe of emotions reflect in them: relief, hurt, happiness, anger. And something else, _something_ that Elena can’t pinpoint but makes her stop dead on her tracks.

Before she could say anything, mama reaches out and lunges for her, her grip so strong on her arms she thinks they might leave a bruise. She yelps as mama shakes her.

“Where have you been?!” Mama’s voice rises at the end, turning almost hysterical.

The guilt gnaws at her. “I’m sorry, I was bored so I left home and--”

“Didn’t I tell you to stay home?!” Another shake. “Didn’t I tell you the world outside is dangerous?!”

Her eyes dart to one side. “I-I didn’t mean to--”

“Elena! Look at me!” She forces herself to meet mama’s eyes. Her pupils are dilated. She’s wild and furious and frenzied. “You stupid, ungrateful child! How dare you disobey me, after all I’ve done for you! How dare you do this to me!”

All she could do is stare in response. Is this her mama? But the person before her better resembles a creature in her nightmares come to life. The fear swelling inside her is no longer due to the thunderstorm.

“I raised you and protected you all my life! I threw away everything for you! And this is how you repay me?!” Another shake, more violent this time. Elena squeezes her eyes shut, the tears threatening to fall. Her heart pounds against her ribcage. “Why would you do this, Elena? Why would you disobey your own mother?!”

“I’m sorry!” It comes out in a burst, loud and clear even through the heavy rainfall and the growling of the sky. “I didn’t mean to! I was just--”

The top of a tree dangerously close to them explodes into flames. She breaks her apology with a gasp.

Her mother releases her and whirls around. The flames dance in her eyes. Elena follows her line of sight and cries out in alarm when burning branches snap and fall, embers glowing orange and red and yellow flying and scattering, like fireflies of destruction.

Mama says something. She watches her lips move but all she can hear is a monotonous ringing in her ears. The hand that falls on her shoulder is gentle, almost apologetic.

The ringing fades, replaced once again with thunder and downpour and the crackling of fire. “Wh-What?”

“We have to return to the house,” her mama repeats. Her voice is firm and convicted, devoid of all the earlier hysteria. “Come on, Elena!”

She nods firmly, her mother’s sudden determination contagious. But before she could say or do anything else, a bolt of lightning cuts through the darkness of the sky and strikes the tree next to their house. The deafening bang reverberates long after the flashes end.

Elena’s eyes widen as she watches the tree break at its torso. It creaks and wobbles, its bark tearing at the movement, _Snap! Crack! Snap!_ Her breath hitches. She doesn’t dare move, as if the slightest shift of air coming from her would topple it over.

It sways left, right, left. Then it dips and plunges towards the mustard-colored house. Towards her prison. Towards her home.

Even after all that’s happened to her in that house, she can’t let lightning destroy such a gigantic part of her minuscule world.

She raises her hand. The trunk explodes. Embers fly, red and amber and gold. Burning wood and leaves scatter. They look like meteorites, bright and blazing and dying as they descend, the downpour putting out their flames before they could do any considerable damage. Dark, dying smoke becomes the only remnant of the explosion’s brief existence.  
For a moment, the world is still. Elena stares, her mouth hung open. She did it! And what’s more, she did it in front of mama.

She lets out an ecstatic shout, pumping her fist in the air like she’s seen people do in the movies and TV shows when they’ve done something worthy of celebration. Her powers saved their house! She’s proven to mama that her abilities aren’t an abomination. Her powers can help her save something, too.

She turns to her mother. Mama’s look wipes the smile right off her face.

Mama takes a slow, ominous step towards her. Her eyes blaze. Her trembling hands are balled into fists.

“How did you become so strong?!” The light of the remaining fire dances upon her face, casting shadows that emphasize the frown and the knotted brows, exaggerating the contortions of an expression filled with anger.

She takes a shaky step back. “I-I practiced--”

Mama’s face is engulfed in a terrifying red glow. “Is that why you were in the forest?!”

She sputters. “Yes, but mama, I can do things with my abilities--”

A sudden slap to her cheek cuts her desperate explanation short. She draws her hand to the sting, wincing as her fingers touch the reddening skin.

“And you go out there behind my back and practice? To strengthen that curse that destroyed your life and mine?”

Suddenly, mama’s hands are on Elena’s hair, pulling and tugging. Elena yelps in pain and tries to tug her hair back in protest, but mama just keeps pulling, so hard that Elena thinks she might rip them right off her scalp. “You want to _embrace_ what evil sorcery you have.”

“It’s not evil!” Mama keeps tugging at her hair so she tries to bat her hands away, but her grip never loosens. “I saved our house from getting destroyed! It’s not evil!” _I’m not evil._

A particularly hard yank sends her off-balance. She stumbles and collapses into a puddle, splashing cold, murky water onto her dress, her arms, her face. Filling her nostrils with the earthy smell of mud. Mama finally releases her, but the terrible pain remains, and a tremble courses through her freezing body.  
“Don’t talk back to me, stupid, ungrateful girl!” Mama’s frantic, livid scream echoes through the forest, and the sky thunders as if one with her rage. As if the heavens, too, are damning Elena for a power she never asked for. “I left everything _because_ of your devil’s curse!”

Elena shifts, almost imperceptibly, her legs drawing to her chest in reflex. And then she is still, as though fighting back the tremors from the chills coursing through her body. Mama’s foot lands in a puddle as she steps towards her, sending muddied water splashing all over mama’s legs. And then there is that something once more, that harsh _something_ she could not describe in mama’s voice, that makes her wince. “Do you know what your abuela and my sisters and all your cousins think of us? Do you know, Elena?! They all think we’re _dead_!”

She snaps her head up and stares, uncomprehending.

“Everyone who has ever loved and cared for us, for _me_ , thinks we are dead! I had to erase everyone else from my life--no, I _threw_ away my entire life, all because I wanted to protect you from _them_!”

Her mama points a shaking finger to the trail opposite the house, but when Elena turns all she could see is darkness and the rain and sharp shadows, sharp teeth and outstretched claws, that flicker in and out of existence, one-two-three, with each flash of lightning.

“Them?” One mud-coated hand goes to her scalp; it still stings from the yanking. “Who’s them? Mama I don’t understand, what are you trying to tell--”

“Why could you not have let it be, Elena?” She flinches and leans back, her eyes darting back to the ground, because that something, _something_ in mama’s look that the can’t understand still hurts her all the same. “Why couldn’t you just forget your devil-powers ever existed? If you didn’t practice, if you didn’t try to use them, then maybe one day they would disappear! Maybe one day we could return to the world again instead of living this... this half-life.”

Elena feels her blood rise. Her fingers are growing warm even against the cold rain, her heartbeat speeds up. Her eyes narrow and she thinks, she could destroy the world right now. She can break apart everything, shatter it into nonexistence--

She forces the thought away and smothers the need to destroy. Even now, she doesn’t want to hurt mama, and so she won’t.

So she keeps her eyes on the ground. The raindrops pitter-patter against the dead leaves littering the floor. Her teeth are chattering. “I-I’m sorry, mama. I didn’t know...”

“How could you not know?!” The harshness in mama’s voice makes her shrink back, yet she fights against the need to curl into a ball and pretend she is somewhere else, someone else, with a completely different name and a completely different life and nothing that makes her different. “I am tired of this, Elena. I am tired of being invisible. I am tired of being dead to the world because of you. You and your stupid curse. Why did this happen to me? Why did I have to have you as a child? Of all the children I could have had, the Lord chose to give me _you_.”

Just like that, Elena loses the will to fight back. She raises her eyes and stares, slack-jawed, lips trembling, at that face contorted with rage. Is she still mama? She barely knows the person before her now. And the knowledge that _she_ did this, that it’s her fault this monster underneath her mama existed, this almost feral rage released because of her selfishness. Because she thought she could be better than she really is.

She picks herself off the ground but stumbles backward, her back hitting a tree behind her. Her tense shoulders abruptly slump. She doesn’t know what to say or do, and she’s not sure she really wants to do anything other than disappear from this world.

“I should have let them take you. I should have let you die.”

She flinches, once again. And then she realizes what made her heart stop, back when she first saw mama under the rain. She knows that look in her mama’s eyes. Her heart sinks to the pit of her stomach, a big, ugly lump forms in her throat, the back of her eyes begin to prickle.

Because she’s staring straight back into unrestrained, relentless hatred.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to the lovely Nadyell at masquerade-parade.net for beta-reading.

**Author's Note:**

> Please visit/follow my writing tumblr, chiquiwrites.tumblr.com, for the latest updates!


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